1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to lampholders, for example, for elongated tubular fluorescent lamps, which facilitate the assembly of a plurality of lamps in an end-to-end relationship.
2. Description of the Related Art
Common fluorescent lamp bases or lampholders are frequently formed of an insulative housing containing a pair of contacts with a transverse slot in one lampholder face communicating with a cylindrical cavity to allow insertion of a pair of lamp contact pins and the connection of those pins to the internal contacts. A lamp is moved orthogonally to its direction of elongation and pairs of contact pins at opposite lamp ends are passed along the lampholder slots, and the tube subsequently rotated about its elongation axis to engage the pins with the internal contacts. The engagement is sufficiently resilient to retain the lamp in its pair of lampholders. A lampholder of this type is frequently fixed to a mounting plate and a pair of mounting plates and associated lampholders upstand from a common flat plate to receive a lamp. Two or more lamps may be mounted parallel to and adjacent one another and/or lamps may be concatenated to form a lengthy chain of lamps. In either case, two lampholders are usually employed for each elongated tubular lamp. In the case of a linear array of lamps, unless the lamps are staggered in some way, there is typically an air gap between adjacent lampholders, hence, lampholders and their associated hardware consume a considerable portion of the overall length of the array.